Saturday, September 27, 2014

“How reward power is exercised affects outcome. Compliance is most likely if the reward is something valued by the target person. Thus, it is essential to determine what rewards are valued, and a leader should not assume that it be the same for everyone.” Gary Yukl, Leadership in Organizations

As our political leaders and state level policy makers continue to try to find ways to “improve our K-12” systems of education, one persistent idea that just won’t go away is the idea of merit pay and punishment by accountability. They still remain faithful to the idea that somehow teachers will raise test scores if they are offered a big enough carrot or if their livelihoods are somehow placed in jeopardy enough to bring about a level of fear strong enough to give them the test scores they desire. After over a decade of “test-reward-and-punish” policies under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, you would think they would finally give up. Instead, money is still being poured into even more standards development and testing, in the hope that somehow education reform magic will happen. What these educational policymakers and politicians just don’t understand is performance pay and punishments are dead in the water before they are even implemented.
One of the reasons for the uselessness of merit pay is captured succinctly by Gary Yukl in his book, Leadership in Organizations. Rewards will only bring about compliance if those rewards are something valued by the "target person.” Don’t get me wrong, teachers and educators want to be paid fairly and be able to live comfortably, but educators know going into the the job that what they are doing is an endeavor much greater that a paycheck. Most are just not built to pursue the big carrots for their own sake. That is one thing that politicians and policymakers don’t get. Perhaps they are motivated by greed, but many of us are not.

Another problem with the carrot and stick approach to education reform is that many educators just don’t believe that test scores are a worthy goal to pursue. Most teachers who have been in the classroom see the tests for what they really are: a single measure focused on a small portion of learning given at a single point in time. That means the test can give s snapshot of only a sliver of learning, but it can’t be the ultimate goal of learning because so much of learning falls outside testing. Our current public education system is asking educators to believe that test scores are an important goal of learning, and many aren’t buying it, and never will.As Yulk points out, “Even when the conditions are favorable for using rewards, they are more likely to result in compliance rather than commitment.” Rewards only get people to do what is required; they do not engage people’s hearts and minds totally in the goal of education. Under rewards, people aren’t committed to their jobs, the kids, or to the profession. Our current system of accountability and testing along with its reward and punish for test score performance will never work because at its heart, because teaching requires more than compliance; it requires dedication and commitment and no amount of money can purchase that.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

In this News and Observer article entitled "A Hidden, Drastic Change in NC School Funding" Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske describe more sinister legislative action taken by our North Carolina Legislature and Governor during this last legislative session.

In the past, school districts received funding based on projected enrollment. This allowed school districts to plan for growth, and if their enrollments did not pan out, adjustments to funding were made. Now, the waning hours of this past legislative session, and without much public input, schools funding will be based on last year's enrollment. Basically, as Ladd and Fiske point out, "Funding to cover growing enrollments will have to be negotiated and compete with other state priorities." The bottom line, is our legislature has opened the door to being able still cut education further without saying they are cutting education.

In spite of the recent political advertising by Governor Pat McCrory and House leader (US Senate Candidate) Thom Tillis boasting about their "increased" education funding, these two have been leaders in a North Carolina government that has done more to hurt education than ever. Of course I have to throw Senate leader Phil Berger in that mix as well because he is the third prong of this anti-public education crew. The one thing all of these gentlemen have been consistent about is their disdain for public education and for public educators. They have resorted to trickery and deception on a number of occasions before, so this little budget wizardry is hardly surprising.

These are sad times in North Carolina when our North Carolina Legislature and Governor have resorted to deceptive and underhanded tactics to continue to underfund and undermine public education. Teachers and educators in general are leaving. None of our young people are choosing teaching as a profession. It has become fairly clear that our current state government continues to damage public education in North Carolina in ways I fear it would never recover, but perhaps that's the plan.

Monday, September 22, 2014

I admit it. I am one of those guilty ones who set his alarm to get up at 3:00 AM Eastern Standard Time in order to purchase an iPhone 6 + on September 12. I must admit, I have been more than pleased with my experiences so far.

The issue I had with my old iPhone 4s was simply screen size. It worked well as a phone, an email-checking device, and even for occasionally checking my social media accounts, but the screen-size made it difficult for me, a fifty-plus year old to read any text for a length of time. With the iPhone 6+ I have finally found a phone, or phablet as they're called, that meets my needs.

With the iPhone 6+ I am able to do all the things I was able to do with the iPhone 4, but now, due to its size, I can now do many of the things I used to do with my tablet on my phone. For example, reading from my Kindle app on the iPhone 4 was a miserable experience for me. The screen was just too small. In addition, this same small screen problem prevented me from using my other favorite productivity apps such as Pages or Writer Pro. Now, I simply connect my MaCally keyboard to my iPhone 6 +, and I can type away, as I'm doing with this blog post.

Now the naysayers point to the size of the iPhone phablet as a negative, saying it's just too big to use as a phone, but with my extra large hands, I have had no problems. In fact, there've been few issues at all with the device. The battery life is actually better than either my iPhone 4s or my iPads, mini or otherwise. It really does hold a charge.

I suppose the question many would ask is: Why should I get an iPhone 6+? Well, if you're like me, it brings the best of two devices together: phone and tablet. I actually have found myself using the iPhone 6+ for many tasks I had relegated to my tablet. Overall, my early experiences are mostly positive. I am hoping for a little better case as these devices become more popular.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Most of us have heard the old politician joke that begins with the question, "How can you tell when a politician is lying?" And the answer? "Their lips are moving?" While the humor from that joke might have disappeared from that statement after years of use, the truth of that statement is perhaps alive and well in North Carolina. Maybe the word lying isn't exactly correct, but there sure is a great deal of prevaricating going on.

Recently, in a WRAL newstory, "Letter from McCrory Stirs Pot Over Teacher Raises," it seems our governor's office and NC US Senate candidate have declared that a 5.5% raise is the same as a 7% raise. According to that same article, Josh Ellis, a spokesperson for Governor McCrory, states that McCrory and Thom Tillis are saying the same thing. According to Ellis, the difference between whether his office and the North Carolina Legislature gave teachers a 5.5% average raise or a 7% raise is a matter of "accounting differences." Methinks I see both politician's lips moving on this one.

The question I ask is really simple, "Why does our NC Governor and NC State Legislature, led by Thom Tillis and Phil Berger have to resort to deception and trickery when they should simply be doing something right for education and teachers?" I certainly know part of the answer; there's an election in a couple of months and they had to at least "give the appearance of giving teachers a raise." What better way to do that than by using "accounting trickery" to cook the books? That way, they can claim the same truth, and both be right. Well, they might use this "accounting wizardry" in their businesses, but it is just plain wrong to play those games on the hardworking teachers in this state, and to deceive the public as they've done.

What's even worse, other legislators like NC Representative Nelson Dollar and State Senator Tom Apodaca don't even appear to be sure about the amount of raise they gave teachers. Apodaca is quoted as saying that from "everything he's seen on the pay raise tells him its a 7% average hike, not the 5.5% percent raise listed by the governor." The phrase "from everything he's read" could certainly mean he hasn't read much except the lines being fed to him by legislative leaders. Other legislators aren't sure about other things in this raise as well. NC Representative Dollar seems to be either confused or is being misleading. Hard to tell which, except his lips are moving too. He even questions whether the raise provided by this NC Governor and Legislature included taking away longevity and adding it back as part of the "7.7%" raise. He claims the 7.7% does not include the longevity. Perhaps its some of the NC Legislative Accounting again. According to our state legislature and governor's office, 2+2 can equal whatever they decide it equals apparently.

What's really bad about all this, is that appears we have a NC governor and NC Legislature that purposefully or unpurposefully made the raises they gave teachers this year murky. For Thom Tillis and Governor Pat McCrory, it makes a great deal of sense to do just that in an election year. Figure out a way to give the least amount of raise, and then use fuzzy accounting to inflate the amount of raise you gave. Instead of using reality to back their arguments, they use inventive accounting. Either these two gentlemen think the general public and teachers are too stupid to figure it out, or they are more devious that even I could imagine. Once again though, you have to keep in mind their lips are moving!

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John Robinson

English/Language Arts Teacher for 16 Years, School Level Administrator, BA English, MA Instructional Technology-Computers, MSA School Administration, EdS Educational Leadership. Ideas and opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent those of any organization to which I am associated.